Thursday, August 20, 2015

Unicode Version 8.0 - Complete Text of the Core Specification Published

The core specification for Version 8.0 of the Unicode Standard is now available, containing significant updates and improvements:

A rewritten description of casing to account for the
addition of a set of lowercase Cherokee syllables

A substantial revision to the documentation on emoji
symbols, including descriptions of the new symbol modifiers for
implementing skin tone diversity

An update to New Tai Lue to describe the change of
model from logical to visual

Descriptions for five new scripts and Sutton
SignWriting

Improvements to existing script descriptions,
including Bengali, Devanagari, Malayalam, and to the description of tag
characters.

In Version 8.0, the standard grew by 7,716 characters. This version continues the Unicode Consortium’s long-standing commitment to support the full diversity of languages around the world by adding new scripts and other characters that support additional languages of Africa and India, such as Ik, Kulango, and Tai Ahom. The text of the latest version also documents the newly adopted Georgian lari currency symbol.

All other components of Unicode 8.0 were released on June 17, 2015 to allow vendors to update their implementations of Unicode 8.0 as early as possible. These components include the Unicode Standard Annexes, code charts, and the Unicode Character Database. The publication of the core specification completes the definitive documentation of the Unicode Standard, Version 8.0. A print-on-demand (POD) version for Unicode 8.0 is planned for later publication.